When the drawing-room door closed upon her graceful figure, I felt for a moment as though the gas had been suddenly turned off. I recollect, however, the hostess's observation, dropped to the accompaniment of a playfully malicious smile:
"Didn't I tell you, you would like my friend Mary Verner?"
"Yes," was the reply, "and I have passed a most delightful evening; but I don't think it quite fair, Mrs. F."—here there was a terrible smash of the theory—"to open the gates of Paradise, and then slam them in a poor fellow's face?"
I was to have gone, that night, to a ball in Devonshire Place, expressly to meet—Never mind; I was not in the humour for dancing or flirting. I went straight home, and to bed. I tossed about a good deal, and finally dreamed about George and the pony, and that I was climbing the old chestnut-trees. As for Mary Verner, I couldn't in my sleep conjure up her image. When I thought I had it—as is the way in dreams, you know, if you ever studied them—I couldn't get nearer to her than the plaguy old family coachman. It was only when broad awake, the next morning, that I found myself strongly impressed by this, my second meeting. But again—such is life and such is youth—the impression was soon stowed away on an upper shelf in memory's garret.
III.
Two years later; two years and two months.
Did you ever notice the marked difference between youth and old age—aye, and middle age, too—in the matter of reading newspapers? We—I speak of myself now as the writer—who are in the vanguard of the march through life, must have our Times or our Chronicle, as regularly as our morning meal. Is it, as some spitefully assert, that we grow more self-complacent as we pore over the misfortunes or the errors of our fellows; or is it, that we seek refuge from the cares and disappointments of our own lot, in a close scrutiny of that of all the world beside, with the minutiæ of which the diligent, prying, gossipping press so unceasingly plies our curiosity? It is folly, perhaps, to raise the question, since this is not the place to discuss it; though it were not far from the truth to attribute much of the pettiness of our race, in these days, to this habit of abandoning our thoughts and impulses to the guidance of journalists who trade in them.
I only mean to say that being still youthful at twenty-three, I "cared for none of these things," As for heeding who was born, or buried, or married, beyond the circle of one's own intimate connections—I should as soon have set to work to trace the pedigree of a New Zealander. Probably, I heard in due time that Mary Verner had become Mrs. Easton. Certainly I did not learn it from the usual printed record. In short, I then very seldom read newspapers at all; and this I beg you to bear in mind. What a shocking ignoramus I should be voted, if I were to say so of this present time.
That, too, was the season of darkness, ere Albert Smith was the Lecturer par excellence; ere Oxford and Cambridge men, returning from their "long-vacation" rambles, disputed in the daily papers their respective prowess in scaling the precipices of Monte Rosa, or discovering new pathways up Mont Blanc. How changed are we to-day! Save for the voluminous records of the Crimean war, what Mamelons and Malakoffs would the pedestrians, Smith and Jones, be now fighting over, in the Times!
Nevertheless, though they made less fuss about it, Englishmen were then, as now, prone to scurrying off to Switzerland in the Autumn—some in the true cockney spirit—some because they found there the most sublime of all spectacles, together with the most exhilarating exercise for the body, and relaxation of mind in its fullest sense. With myself it amounted to a passion; "Cuthbert's hobby" it was dubbed by acquaintances, who could eke out delight from Leamington and Cheltenham.